Alan Jacobs

Theo Epstein: Baseball “is the greatest game in the world, … but there are some threats to it because of the way the game is evolving, and I take some responsibility for that because the executives like me who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to optimize individual and team performance have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game.”

I think Theo is correct, as well I might, because I wrote an essay about this very thing a couple of years ago. After half a century of being a pretty serious baseball fan, I haven’t watched a game since I wrote that essay — and, to my own ongoing surprise and puzzlement, I haven’t missed baseball at all.

Things many people who haven’t published don’t understand: We writers rarely have any control over (1) titles of essays and articles, (2) subtitles of books, (3) cover art for books. And we absolutely never have any say in pricing.

Just discovered that a fairly generous except of my biography of C. S. Lewis is available online — as a PDF — complete with the absolutely hideous cover image that I fruitlessly protested against when it was shown to me.

I think this post by Ilya Somin, especially if you follow up its many useful links, raises the central question of American politics in our era: How can politics best be conducted in an environment in which so many people don’t care whether what they say is actually true?

Santa Subito!!

It’s just wonderful to me that friends of mine (Erin, Amanda, Alexis, Rob), have been doing this amazing work to track Covid cases in America — and it’s deeply depressing to me that they had to.

In recent weeks I’ve expressed my gratitude to my students, who have been so faithfully disciplined in doing what they needed to do to keep us on campus all term. But here’s another factor in our success: we have 1/3 the students of UT Austin but have administered twice as many Covid tests.

Well, I knew this was coming. And let’s be clear: Krebs was fired for telling the truth. (The unforgivable sin in certain circles.)

That’s right, I’m playing Monument Valley 2 on my Mac.

48º, AKA perfect napping weather for a Sheltie.

And speaking of newsletters not on Substack, I have posted an issue this morning.

Overall, I think the move by some of our most provocatively interesting journalists to newsletters is a salutary one. But it’s not good for all of them to go to Substack.

Barack Obama:

The point I’ve always made to Ta-Nehisi, the point I sometimes make to Michelle, the point I sometimes make to my own kids — the question is, for me, “Can we make things better?”

I used to explain to my staff after we had a long policy debate about anything, and we had to make a decision about X or Y, “Well, if we do this I understand we’re not getting everything we’re hoping for, but is this better?” And they say yes, and I say, “Well, better is good. Nothing wrong with better.”

Ibram X. Kendi:

There’s no saving America’s soul. There’s no restoring the soul. There’s no fighting for the soul of America. There’s no uniting the souls of America. There is only fighting off the other soul of America.

Obama and Trump did not poison the American soul any more than Biden can heal it. Trump battled for the soul of injustice, and the voters sent him home. Soon, President Biden can battle for the soul of justice.

Our past breaths do not bind our future breaths. I can battle for the soul of justice. And so can you. And so can we. Like our ancestors, for our children. We can change the world for Gianna Floyd. We can — once and for all — win the battle between the souls of America.

This morning I’m doing my weekly reading of the news, and I’ve just read these two stories, from the same magazine, back to back. The contrast is illuminating. One sees politics as the hard slow work of improving the world; the other see politics as the movement towards a final confrontation, on the plain of Megiddo I suppose, between the forces of Righteousness and the forces of Evil.

Barack Obama: “ If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis.” The entire interview is utterly fascinating.

Cheating-detection companies made millions during the pandemic. Now students are fighting back: “Students argue that the testing systems have made them afraid to click too much or rest their eyes for fear they’ll be branded as cheats. Some students also said they’ve wept with stress or urinated at their desks because they were forbidden from leaving their screens.” Burn it down. Burn it completely and irrevocably down. Proctorio delenda est.

Cheakamus Lake, Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, 2006